Spoons & Spirits

My poor mom went by years without knowing why the fuck she was having all these debilitating symptoms.

All it took was me making her add some more salt to her diet and have an isotonic drink daily and she IMMEDIATELY (as in, less than an hour) stopped feeling faint whenever she got up from kneeling down and her hair is slowly falling off less and less.

It’s not normal for any of that to make you light-headed or nauseous, or get blurry vision, headaches or palpitations.

It’s not normal for your body to suck at regulating its temperature and for your heart rate to go insane if you’re just mildly stressed.

It’s not normal to want to be active and “productive” but be unable to get your body to do anything so you just lay there, or if you manage to get anything done, you’ll need a whole week to recover.

It’s not normal to be tremendously tired all the time no matter how much you rest and sleep, even if people think you’re just “lazy”.

I’m pointing all these things out as abnormal because chronically ill people tend to not realize that our symptoms are symptoms.

Our individual bodies are the only bodies we’ve experienced and since most of us don’t look any different from others and aren’t taken seriously when we complain of any ailment, we assume our symptoms happen to everyone. They do not.

People with no physical conditions (at least not impairing ones such as being a bit short-sighted) do not have their bodies make life difficult for them, unless they’re temporarily ill. But we are ill ALL the time.

Take yourself seriously. Doctors and healthy people already don’t, so if you don’t take yourself seriously, who will?

With this fear of salt, people all over are developing POTS- salt deficiency disorder for the laymen. Some other symptoms include partial or total blackouts and what i refer to as heat sickness. Salt regulates your hydration and body temperature. If you DON’T SWEAT you have POTS. If summer months are almost impossible for you to enjoy because of the heat and sun, you probably have POTS and need more salt. If salty foods like puckles, fries, and chips taste absurdly good and/or addictive and/or SALTLESS, YOU NEED MORE SALT. Your tastebuds are literally telling you that you arent getting enough salt for your body. How do you know enough is enough? When your tastebuds go ‘ew thats TOO much salt’. Thats your sign you finally have enough in you for now. Yes, you can literally eat a teaspoon of salt and it STILL NOT BE TOO SALTY if you are very salt deficient.

Young people can have arthritis too.

There are hundreds of life long conditions and diseases out there that are typically diagnosed between 12 and 30.

There is a vast difference between being tired and having chronic fatigue.

Just because you can’t tell that someone is unwell from looking at them, doesn’t mean that you should assume that they are ok.

Many chronic illnesses are life long, and incurable. Many of them are potentially fatal.

If you have a disease like Lupus, on good days you still feel like you have a bad flu, 24/7.

Many of the medications used to treat chronic conditions have side effects that can really affect someone’s self esteem - like extreme weight gain, skin changes and hair loss.

Most chronic illnesses have very little awareness - its unlikely that you’ve heard of Sjogren’s Syndrome, Scleroderma, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome or Fibromyalgia.

However these diseases can cause symptoms as varied as joint pain, fatigue, constant nausea, kidney failure, pneumonia, photo sensitivity, full body rashes, paralysis, strokes etc.

I'm still going to the vet for medical confirmation, though, frankly, it sucks that we're going to pay a bunch of money to confirm what I am already certain of.

I will share a post shortly that goes over the services offered as well as the downgraded prices. As an aside, I recently enabled the tipping option for my blog, and if anyone has even an extra dollar to donate here or there, it will be greatly appreciated. I work full time as a self employed Magical Practitioner, and I offer my services as a Farrie Physicker for free, so finances aren't always the most stable thing in my life. Luckily, magic picks up the slack in terms of getting our needs met most of the time, but when it comes to something like the immediate need of medical intervention for my beloved animal companions, I am reminded of just how much money makes the (capitalistic) world go 'round.

The willow woman.

Let that sink in. A 1 year old dog, which means too young for all the appropriate health testing or even really to know their full temperament/conformation. An accidental breeding to a dog with an unknown health status and pedigree. $2000-3000.

1. They're super unpredictable because so many of them contain really random breed mixes. A labrador poodle is not a golden retreiver poodle is not an Australian shepherd poodle is not a St. Bernard poodle is not a Bernese mountain dog poodle... but then you get so many things like "this is a mini bernadoodle it will be 25 pounds!" Which is significantly smaller than both parent breeds that allegedly went into it and with merle colored coats from some mystery source too. You can't do research on a purpose bred mix if you don't reliably know what the mix even is. The poodle half isn't going to equalize everything else in there.

And

2. The grooming, oh gods. People get these dogs because they want a dog that won't shed. But they mistake no shedding for low maintenance and think "it doesn't shed therefore it doesn't need to be brushed."

So you end up with huge dogs (a labrador standard poodle can easily top 80 pounds) that have very little grooming training that only have their issues addressed when it's already a neglect case and they're pelted down to the skin.

It's a really bad breed mix to get on a whim, because these animals will need regular dedicated grooming and daily combing down to the skin. A groomer will charge probably a hundred dollars per visit give or take, and if you go as often as you should that's an expensive thing to ask.

I hate that French bulldogs are the trendy new breed because they're already so structurally sus and people cranking them out and only breeding for color will only make that worse and worse. But a Frenchie is at least a small dog that the average person can fairly easily groom at home.

I know what an actual poodle's coat is like and how to groom it.

Doodles? You don't know until they start maturing.

No matter what we do. Even if we win the lottery and have access to all the latest medical advances.

Human bodies work in mysterious and unpredictable ways. This is not something we have control over.

But that compression can also make objects look the wrong size in context with the subject depending on the framing.

This is done in live action as well using another person's hands in front of the camera.